New Maine Bureau of Labor Education Educator An Thuy Nguyễn Discusses Globalization & Building International Solidarity

The University of Maine’s Bureau of Labor Education has recently hired Dr. An Thuy Nguyễn as its new labor professional to carry out the bureau’s mission to provide workers, students and unions with knowledge and resources for understanding and dealing with work-related challenges and opportunities.

“Labor has made incredible progress over the past year and for me it is a beacon of hope for people that care not just about working people, but justice in general,” said Nguyễn. “The success that labor has been able to make recently makes now an ideal time to invest more in labor education and help promote awareness of this field. That was really one of the main reasons that led me to pursue this job.”

The Bureau of Labor of Education was established in 1966 with funding from the Maine Legislature to provide educational programs to members of the Maine labor force, both organized and unorganized. However, the Bureau had suffered a series of cutbacks over the years. Funding for Nguyễn’s position was included in Maine AFL-CIO-backed state legislation (LD 1816) that created the Charles Scontras Center for Labor & Community Education at the University of Southern Maine. Dr. Nguyễn will design curriculum, teach courses, research and write on topics related to labor studies, labor education, labor unions and history. One of the courses she plans to design will cover globalization, labor and women workers in the US labor movement and in Maine.

Nguyễn said that as a historian, she recognizes the critical role the labor movement has played in advancing social justice and economic equality. She said her experience as a Vietnamese woman living in the US and growing up in a country ravaged by war and poverty influenced her to stand with disadvantage people and help improve their working conditions.

“I think this vantage point is really reinforced by my experience being a woman and scholar of color in the US,” she said.

Nguyễn originally came to US from her native Vietnam in 2006 as part of high school exchange program. She later got a full scholarship to college where she got her degree in International Studies and Economics.

“I always wanted to learn about what happened in my country with the war,” said Nguyễn. “I grew up with this kind of polarization both on the political and personal level.”

Her family was South Vietnamese and allied with the US during the Vietnam War, so her parents very pro-American and anti-Communist. But when she went to high school, she was taught the exact opposite story.

“I was taught to worship Ho Chi Minh and the Communist Party and there was no nuance and analysis as far as I could tell,” she said. “I was just very confused about what really happened in my country.”

Nguyễn decided to pursue her masters degree at the University of Maine because she wanted to study under the late UMaine Professor Ngô Vĩnh Long, one of the foremost historians on US/Vietnam relations. Long was originally from South Vietnam and was an outspoken critic of the Vietnam War. In 1964 he was forced to emigrate to the US to escape arrest for his anti-war activism in 1964. At UMaine, Long introduced Nguyễn to her other mentors, UMaine history Professors Nathan Godfried and Beth McKillen.

Nguyễn says that while factory workers and farmers in Vietnam are some of the least protected and exploited people in the world, workers everywhere share common challenges. Large corporations have long pitted workers across international borders against each other. Maine was once home to large textile and shoe industries that were outsourced to places like Vietnam where there are low wages and few labor protections.

Nguyễn said unfortunately existing international labor structures like the International Labor Organization (ILO) give corporations and nation states equal representation with workers, which allows businesses to ally with states to undermine workers.

“It would help if there can be reforms that give labor a stronger say on the global stage or a stronger effort to reshape the World Trade Organization into something that creates Fair Trade rather than free trade,” she said. “But I think the common denominator is that there needs to be a stronger international workers movement.”

In  her doctoral thesis, she wrote about how anti-war activists in South Vietnam and the US built transnational networks and alliances, but her research into labor elements of these relationships were cut short when her advisor Professor Long died suddenly in 2022. Nguyễn says she wants to explore ways of building international solidarity.

“I just think that if we bring a little bit of the perspective and experience of workers overseas to working people here to create a dialogue it might help workers understand that they are not alone in these struggles,” she said. “People in other countries, including my own, Vietnam, cannot fathom that there is so much food insecurity here. They have this mystified perception that everyone in the US is living prosperous lives because they live in the richest, most powerful country on earth. They just can’t imagine that there are still people who struggle to find a place to live, basic health care and have food on the table.”

Nguyễn says she is looking forward to meeting more Mainers in the labor movement and learning about what they would like to see from the Bureau of Labor Education.

“I’m just eager to help in any way I can and more importantly to learn from them,” she said.